Four-time Emmy award-winning actress Kim Zimmer (“Guiding Light”) chatted with Digital Journal’s Markos Papadatos about her illustrious career in daytime television, and her upcoming segment on “The Locher Room,” which coincides with her birthday and it benefits a great charitable cause.
‘The Locher Room’
On February 2, Zimmer will be celebrating her upcoming birthday on “The Locher Room,” which is hosted by PR vet Alan Locher. The segment will air live at 3 p.m. EST. “I am always excited to be in ‘The Locher Room’ with Alan,” she said.
Fans and viewers will be able to showcase their love by helping her raise money for one of her favorite charities, the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. “Anything that has to do with children has always been of the utmost importance to me. I am so fortunate to have three very healthy children, and as a celebrity, I was able to tour many children’s hospital wings and I realized how fortunate I was to have healthy children, and that’s now always the case,” she said.
“Whenever I can help out a children’s charity, I am first in line,” she added. “These charity events were also beneficial because they allowed me to sing rock and roll,” she said with a sweet laugh.
“Life goes on and I am doing great. I hope the fans are too and I would love to take their questions. I love the interaction with people and getting questions from people. Get your questions ready,” she told her fans about the upcoming virtual event on “The Locher Room.”
Distiguished Daytime TV career
Zimmer made her daytime television debut as Bonnie Harmon on ABC’s “One Life to Live” in 1978. In 1979, she replaced Kathleen Turner in the role of Nola Dancy Aldrich on “The Doctors” before returning to the role of Echo DiSavoy on “One Life to Live.”
In 1983, Kim took Springfield by storm, where she originated the iconic role of Reva Shayne on the long-running daytime drama “Guiding Light.” She played the role with everything she had for over 20 years and she earned four coveted Daytime Emmy Awards for “Outstanding Lead Actress” for her powerhouse acting performances. “Winning the four Emmy Awards felt fantastic,” she admitted. “The first thing everybody says is that the nomination is the hardest thing to get. Winning is just the icing on the cake but getting the nomination is what is most important.”
Zimmer was drawn to playing Reva for many reasons. “The head writers challenged me with storylines all the time,” she said. “I had some of the most wonderful, romantic storylines and I had some of the most historically bizarre storylines. It was my character being cloned and Deidre Hall turning into the devil, so between the two of us, I think we’ve run the gamut of wonderful and bizarre,” she said.
“I definitely had a split personality when I played the clone,” she said with a chuckle.
When she left “Guiding Light” in 1990 for five years, she joined the cast of Santa Barbara as Jodie DeWitt Walker, and she went on to land some memorable primetime roles on “Seinfeld,” “Designing Women” and “MacGyver,” among others.
When asked how she handled being dialogue-heavy in the soap opera world, she responded, “It becomes like exercising a muscle, it becomes muscle memory. I knew that character so well that it was just a matter of plugging in the proper dialogue.”
“I learned my scripts pretty much in the bathtub the night before. I would read them all from beginning to the end to see what the arc of my storyline would be in that day: what my beginning, middle, and end, was going to be, and it was just a matter of plugging in words,” she explained.
She had great words about working with such daytime actors as Robert Newman, Frank Dicopoulos, and Cynthia Watros. “Robert is my lovebug. I adore Frank, I haven’t seen him in way too many years. Frank is a sweetheart,” she said.
“Doing the Annie Dutton and Reva scenes with Cynthia Watros was wonderful and frustrating at the same time,” she admitted. “Annie got away with too many things that I always said that Reva would have caught onto, but I had to play dumb so that was difficult. We had a lot of fun, I adore Cynthia and I watch her on “General Hospital’ and all of my friends on that show. It’s so much fun to keep tabs on everyone.”
“Now, I am going to have to watch ‘The Young and The Restless’ because Robert is going to be on it,” she said.
‘Venice: The Series’
She enjoyed being a part of the digital drama series “Venice: The Series,” which was co-created by Crystal Chappell and Kim Turrisi, where Zimmer played the role of Tori. “That was fun. I admire Crystal Chappell and Hillary B. Smith so much for all of their hard work in putting that together, it is very impressive. We had a lot of fun with that,” she said.
On the title of the current chapter of her life, Zimmer said with a sweet laugh, “Grandmother.” “That is my life right now,” she acknowledged.
Zimmer has been married to A.C. Weary for almost 41 years and together they have three children Rachel, Max, and Jake. Today, the couple enjoys spending time with their three grandchildren, Vincent, Sophie, and Reed.
The digital age
On being an actress in the digital age, Zimmer said, “It’s a sign of the times. There are many digital soap operas out there, it’s amazing. I am pretty much retired though I actually just finished a film, that was a lot of fun.”
If Zimmer were to have any superpower, she revealed that it would be “able to heal the sick or find a cure for childhood diseases.”
When asked which animal or object she would dress on “The Masked Singer,” if she were ever given the chance to be on that reality show, she noted that she would go as a “baby monkey.”
Success
Zimmer defined the word success as “being happy in life.”
For her fans and supporters, Zimmer said, “Thank you for all of their support through a myriad of wonderful and bizarre storylines.”
